The groups of 30 asylum seekers are crammed into the back of several Toyota utility vehicles, as they speed across the Sahara.

The passengers have paid smugglers thousands of dollars to get out of Sudan and into Europe, but their journey has been treacherous – and for some already deadly.

With no water to get them through the scorching, stifling heat, many die, as their friends watch in horror. But according to Kiflom, an Eritrean who was among the group, none of the drivers could care.

“Why should we care? God willing you will die too,” Kiflom is told by one of the drivers.

Kiflom was one of the few who survived, and eventually made it to Italy. But his journey began when he left Israel in April 2016 under its so-called “voluntary departure” programme, which moves unwanted African migrants to a third country with promises of financial support and official refugee status at their destination.

But many of the thousands of mainly Sudanese and Eritreans who left between 2014 and 2016 found their new hosts to be less than welcoming, the promised support failing to materialise, and escape to Europe their only chance of a better life. For many, it was also their death sentence.

Horror stories such as these, contained in a report by the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, Better a prison in Israel than dying on the way, are being used as a warning for 40,000 African migrants and asylum seekers still in Israel.

Under a draconian acceleration of the old ‘voluntary’ scheme in January they were given two options: mandatory deportation within 60 days, or indefinite detention in Israel.

Sheshai, also an Eritrean, considers this option from a cell in the Holot detention centre, southern Israel. He has lived in the country for eight years, but was sent to Holot five months ago. He now has less than a month to decide his future.

“A lot of friends left Israel,” he told Middle East Eye. “They tried to cross to Europe, but a lot of people died in the Sahara, then a lot of people died in Libya, and then more on the Mediterranean.

“We prefer to stay in prison,” he says, although he paints a grim picture of what that means: “We don’t have anything, every day we sleep. We [just] have a phone, we use it for internet. We walk around the prison, to de-stress.”

A dream turns to a nightmare
Indeed the stories from the other side, from those who have already left, is almost exclusively one of confusion, broken promises, and often death.

Many are marooned without support and find themselves quickly on the move, crossing the borders of one failed state after another – including South Sudan and Libya – before betting everything on a boat to Europe.

Haile and Isayas, who both left under the voluntary scheme, told the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants that the support promised by Israel never materialised.

Both were given $3,500 and tickets to Rwanda, but from there they were on their own.
Isayas told the migrant hotline: “Israel says you can get documents and receive asylum and that you’ll have a good life, like a dream.”

But on landing in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, Isayas’s documents were confiscated and he was led to a “hotel” where he and other migrants were watched by guards to ensure they didn’t leave.

All in Isayas group “stayed in the hotel for a few days before being smuggled to Uganda”.

Haile’s money disappeared fast, and the last of his funds was used to pay smugglers to get him across the Mediterranean. He was one of the lucky ones: surviving the crossing, he found sanctuary in the Netherlands, where he lives now under refugee status.

No refugee status
The promises of refugee status were also often broken by the third country. Dawit, another voluntary departure, told HRM he was denied access to UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency.

“We said we want to go to the UNHCR, but they tell us ‘no, no, no… If you do not move to another country we will return [you] to your country’.”

Feeling “scared, pressured and insecure”, Dawit crossed from Rwanda to Uganda after paying people-smugglers with money given to him by Israel.

Andie Lambe, the executive director of International Refugee Rights Initiative, has studied the plight of asylum seekers moved from Israel to Uganda under the ‘voluntary deportation’ programme.

Lambe said many were taken to a hotel on arrival, “where they could stay for free for two nights”, before being left to fend for themselves.

Not one of those she had dealt with were ever granted refugee status – and many told Lambe they were told not to “bother trying” to apply.

“There is a responsibility on the Israeli state to make sure this is happening, if they are going to put that promise in their communications with potential deportees,” she said.

Many left high and dry in Uganda found their way to South Sudan, a country itself in the grip of civil war and starvation and where millions of its own civilians had been forced from their homes.

Lambe said the deportees from Israel found themselves there as a direct result of getting nothing from the government of Uganda.

Gabriel, one of those who moved into South Sudan, described how he and others got there.

“All the way with no water, nothing. I don’t want to repeat this. It was very hard. We were in the car for almost three days… With goats and sheep, we hid on top,” Gabriel tried to explain his journey.

On reaching the border, Gabriel and the other asylum seekers had to each pay $2,000 to cross.

Once in the capital of Juba, the Eritrean asylum seekers felt most at risk from South Sudanese rebels due to connections between the government of South Sudan and Eritrea.

Feeling in constant danger of being deported back to Eritrea, as well as being robbed and imprisoned for months due to not having identification, the asylum seekers moved north to Sudan.

However, many were picked up by Sudan’s government, which works with Eritrea to return asylum seekers, many of whom have fled forced, life-long conscription to its army.

Samson was one of those scooped up by Sudanese police. After paying a bribe for his freedom, he found many of his friends had already been sent back to their home country.

“Now where are they? I don’t know… [Maybe] they will die in Eritrea.”

Libya’s horror
What came next for those who escaped was even worse: Libya.

The journey to Libya haunts the asylum seekers who survived. “At night it comes to us in our head, it repeats… It wakes me up, what I saw… I don’t want to remember this… I want to close that door,” Kiflom, who survived the desert crossing, told HRM.

Many were placed in overcrowded warehouses for months. In rooms of up to 1,500 people, they were subject to rape, daily violence, slavery, and no food or water.

Like other prisons they had been in, ransoms were required for escape. “Those who did not have money stay longer.” Many died.

The asylum seekers could only get on boats to Italy when the smugglers had found at least 500 people wanting go. Overloaded, the motors on the boats broke.

“We went 500 people into the sea, and out of them returned just maybe 100 people… From Israel there were 10 people on the boat, and we got out only three, you understand? Seven people died,” Tesfay, a survivor, told HRM.

Isayas is thankful he survived. He lives now in Italy. But he will never stop thinking of the people who died.

“Think about the people who left Israel to have a better life and did not make it,” he said.
Dror Sadot, a spokesman from HRM, told Middle East Eye that such stories would always get back to those awaiting deportation.

“They know what happened to their friends, when they left Rwanda or Uganda, they know many died on the way.

“They know they have no work permits. They hear the stories, they’re not ignorant.”

Of those left, Dror Sadot said many believe they will not be imprisoned for long by Israel, and it’s better to wait it out.
Sheshai has hope the High Court in Israel will reverse the government’s plan to deport them. “I hope a lot of people in Israel stand with us, with refugees,” he said.

A Nigerian airline has blamed passengers after a plane door fell off shortly after landing.

The Dana Air flight from Lagos was taxiing on the runway at Abuja airport when the emergency exit door came away.

Passengers told of hearing a “rattling” throughout the flight and described what happened as “scary”.

The airline insisted there was “no way” the door could have fallen off without a passenger making “a conscious effort” to open it.

But passengers said everyone on board had denied tampering with the aircraft.

Dapo Sanwo, from Lagos, told the BBC: “The flight was noisy with vibrations from the floor panel. I noticed the emergency door latch was loose and dangling.

“When we landed and the plane was taxiing back to the park point, we heard a poof-like explosion, followed by a surge of breeze and noise. It was terrible.”

He added: “The cabin crew tried to say a passenger pulled the hatch which everyone denied. They also tried to get us to stop taking videos or pictures.”

Another passenger, Ola Brown, a doctor from Lagos, said the door was “was unstable throughout the flight”.

“As we touched down it fell off,” she added. “Scary stuff.”

In a statement, Dana Air said: “categorically that this could never have happened without a conscious effort by a passenger” to open the door.

It added: “By design, the emergency exit door of our aircraft are plug-type backed by pressure, which ordinary cannot fall off without tampering or conscious effort to open by a crew member or passenger.

“When an aircraft is airborne, it is fully pressurised and there was no way the seat or door could have been ‘shaking’ as insinuated.”

The airline said its engineers and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority inspected the plane upon landing and found there was “no issue” and “no threat to safety at any point”.

It added the aircraft later made the return flight to Lagos.

Dana Air’s licence was suspended in 2012 and again in 2013 after two deadly crashes. It resumed flying in January 2014.

Men who recite the call to prayer (Muadhins) in Tunisia will soon receive musical training at the Rachidi Institute of Tunisian Music in an effort to improve the style,performance and sound of the adhaan in the country.

“Tunisia has an important heritage of believers and readers, including Ali Al-Buraq, Mohammed Al-Buraq, Othman Al-Andari and Muhammad Mashfar. Generations have been raised listening to their voices,” the Minister of Religious Affairs, Ahmed Adhoum, was quoted as saying.

The ministry plans to “train a new generation of believers in accordance with this legacy.”

Muadhins, men who recite the call to prayer, had previously received training in how to pronounce letters according to the denominations of Tunisia.

In the first stage, this composition will target the “big mosques” in Tunis, before implementing it across the country’s mosques as a first move towards unifying the call for prayer.

The Rachidi Institute of Tunisian Music is one of the oldest Arabic music schools. Its foundation dates back to the 1930s, with the aim of preserving Tunisian musical heritage in the face of French colonialism.

At a detention centre in Israel’s Negev desert, African migrants facing deportation say they would rather be imprisoned than sent to a country they know nothing about.

“I won’t go there,” Abda Ishmael, a 28-year-old Eritrean, said in excellent Hebrew outside Holot, an open facility housing some 1,200 migrants and set to be shut down on 1 April as part of the government’s expulsion policy.

“Guys who were here and went to Rwanda and Uganda – we saw what happened to them.”

Israel is working to expel thousands of Eritreans and Sudanese who entered illegally over the years, giving them an ultimatum: leave by 1 April or risk being imprisoned indefinitely.

As the migrants could face danger or imprisonment if returned to their homelands, Israel is offering to relocate them to an unnamed third country, which aid workers say is Rwanda or Uganda.

Those who choose to leave by the end of March are being offered a cash incentive of $3,500.

The plan has drawn criticism from the United Nations’ refugee agency as well as some in Israel, including Holocaust survivors who say the country has a special duty to protect migrants.

Eritreans at Holot say Rwanda and Uganda hold no prospects for them, and they’d rather be imprisoned in Israel than embark on another journey into the unknown.

‘Just seeking asylum’
Ishmael, who reached Israel in 2011 after a terrifying journey from Eritrea, has heard about the fates of others sent to Rwanda or Uganda.

He said they have faced hardships in their new homes and gone on to take dangerous routes to Europe in hope of winning refugee status.

He vowed he would not voluntarily step back into the unknown.

“We know of people who were killed by (the Islamic State group), who were killed on their way to Libya, who starved and died of thirst in the desert,” he said.

He slammed an aid package Israel is reportedly planning to offer African countries in return for absorbing the migrants.

Tewelde Medihin said he planned to stay “indefinitely” in Saharonim prison, where migrants are expected to be sent if they refuse to leave.

According to interior ministry figures, there are currently some 42,000 African migrants in Israel, half of them children, women or men with families, who are not facing the April deportation deadline.

Israeli officials stress that no one they classify as a refugee or asylum seeker will be deported.

But out of some 15,400 asylum requests filed, 6,600 have been processed and just 11 have received positive answers.

Another 1,000 Sudanese from Darfur have received special status preventing their deportation.

Other men whose requests have been denied could face deportation.

Migrants began entering Israel through what was then a porous Egyptian border in 2007. The border has since been strengthened, all but ending illegal crossings.

Many migrants ended up in southern Tel Aviv, where they found work as dishwashers and cooks. But their growing community angered some Israelis.

Protests
Meanwhile, thousands of Eritrean and Sudanese refugees gathered in front of Rwanda’s Embassy in Herzliya to protest the expulsion, and condemn Rwanda for accepting money for their exile.

Although Rwanda’s ambassador, Olivier Nduhungirehe, has denied ongoing reports that his government made a secret deal with Israel to accept forcefully deported migrants at $5,000 per person, the arrangement is widely believed to be a foregone conclusion.

Amid chants of “We are refugees – we are not criminals!” and “Rwanda: Shame on you!” the protesters expressed fear of being forced to leave Israel to a country known for its autocratic regime and human rights violations.

“Don’t sell me to Rwanda,” pleaded Simon Gooka, 23, who came to Israel from South Sudan in 2012. “Please give us the honour of not calling us criminals. We are refugees who came to Israel for protection.”

Holding a sign stating “deportation kills,” Emmanuel Hopta, 30, who came to Israel from Eritrea in 2011, expressed shock at the government’s draconian stance.

“I came here because Israel signed the 1951 Geneva Convention for refugees and I thought they would protect me,” he told the Jerusalem Post.

‘Infiltrators’
Religious and conservative politicians have portrayed the presence of Muslim and Christian Africans as a threat to Israel’s Jewish character.

Calling them “infiltrators,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly called for their expulsion.

Rights groups have rallied to the migrants’ cause, saying they should be recognised in Israel as refugees and arguing they will face grave dangers if they are deported.

Others argue that conditions in Rwanda and Uganda are acceptable and it is not Israel’s duty to care for them.

“I’ll ensure all the rights we promised them, and at the same time, I’ll rehabilitate south Tel Aviv,” Interior Minister Arye Deri said.

The migrants located at Holot are allowed to leave during the day.

Waiting for a bus outside the facility, a defiant Ahmad Jamal, 25, said the government’s plan was a ploy by Netanyahu to divert attention from corruption probes.

“We’re wise to his tricks,” he said bitterly.

Ishmael asked how he could be considered an economic migrant if he cannot be deported to his country of origin because of the dangers there.

“If the government really thinks I infiltrated to become a work migrant, it should have returned me to my country of origin,” he said.

Both Ishmael and Tewelde Medihin miss their home country, but say they had no choice but to flee what they describe as a dictatorship.

Israel has started issuing deportation orders to African migrants, giving them 60 days to return to their home countries or opt for an unnamed safe haven. Those failing to meet the deadline risk being sent to prison.

Israel’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority delivered the first batch of notices Sunday, telling migrants they have to leave before April 1. The notification says the government arranged their relocation to “a safe third country.” In addition to the travel documents and free plane tickets, the migrants will receive a $3,500 cash payment.

The deportation letters does not name the “safe” destination but describes it as “a country that, in the past decade, has developed tremendously,” according to images of the notice circulating in Israeli media. In addition to “some of the highest economic figures in Africa,” the receiving country also offers “stability in its regime.” Upon arrival, newcomers will be granted a residence and work permit.

Should migrants fail to comply willingly with the directive, they will be jailed for an indefinite term, according to media reports, or will be forcibly expelled with the money bonus “significantly reduced.”

Despite, the warnings, some migrants remain defiant. “They told me I had to leave to a third country. They didn’t say which one, but I know it’s Rwanda. It’s a dangerous country,” Debasai Berharabo, 50, from Eritrea told YNet. “If I don’t leave in two months they’ll jail me. Let them. I prefer prison, no matter how long I’m there. They don’t understand I won’t leave to my death. Prison is better than death.”

Other migrants seem to share the non-compliant stance, saying they would rather go to prison than return to Eritrea or Sudan. “They told me to leave after 60 days. I told them that I cannot, there’s a problem because I came here,” Haaretz quoted an Eritrean, named Habtum, as saying.

Israel hosts an estimated 38,000 African migrants and asylum seekers, most of them Eritrean and Sudanese, according to interior ministry figures. Since 2007, some 60,000 migrants arrived in the country through the desert border with Egypt. Israel set up a 245-kilometre fence on the frontier in 2013 in an attempt to curb the inflow.

Scientists have unearthed in a Sahara Desert oasis in Egypt fossils of a long-necked, four-legged, school bus-sized dinosaur that lived roughly 80 million years ago, a discovery that sheds light on a mysterious time period in the history of dinosaurs in Africa.

Researchers said on Monday the plant-eating Cretaceous Period dinosaur, named Mansourasaurus shahinae, was nearly 10 metres long and weighed 5.5 tons and was a member of a group called titanosaurs that included Earth’s largest-ever land animals.

Like many titanosaurs, Mansourasaurus boasted bony plates called osteoderms embedded in its skin.

Mansourasaurus, which lived near the shore of the ancient ocean that preceded the Mediterranean Sea, is one of the very few dinosaurs known from the last 15 million years of the Mesozoic Era, or age of dinosaurs, on mainland Africa.

Madagascar had a separate geologic history.

Its remains, found at the Dakhla Oasis in central Egypt, are the most complete of any mainland African land vertebrate during an even larger time span, the roughly 30 million years before the dinosaur mass extinction 66 million years ago, said paleontologist Hesham Sallam of Egypt’s Mansoura University, who led the study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The scientists recovered parts of its skull, lower jaw, neck and back vertebrae, ribs, shoulder and forelimb, back foot and osteoderms.

A lot of Africa is covered in grasslands, savannas and rainforests that obscure underlying rock where fossils may be found, said postdoctoral researcher Eric Gorscak of the Field Museum in Chicago, who was formerly at Ohio University.

While as massive as a bull African elephant, Mansourasaurus was modestly sized next to titanosaur cousins such as South America’s Argentinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus and Patagotitan and Africa’s Paralititan, some exceeding 30 metres long.

Mansourasaurus
“Mansourasaurus, though a big animal by today’s standards, was a pipsqueak compared to some other titanosaurs,” said palaeontologist Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

The researchers determined Mansourasaurus was more closely related to European and Asian titanosaurs than to those from elsewhere in Africa and other Southern Hemisphere land masses including South America formerly joined in a super-continent called Gondwana.

“This, in turn, demonstrates for the first time that at least some dinosaurs could move between North Africa and southern Europe at the end of the Mesozoic, and runs counter to long-standing hypotheses that have argued that Africa’s dinosaur faunas were isolated from others during this time,” Lamanna said.

In recent months, it has been revealed that African migrants and refugees have been sold in open markets as slaves in Libya, and are held against their will in inhumane conditions in exchange for ransom money.

The revelations sent shock waves globally and sparked protests outside Libyan embassies across Africa and Europe.

Libya is a major transit destination for migrants and refugees hoping to reach Europe by sea.

Human trafficking networks have prospered amid lawlessness, created by the warring militias that have been fighting for control of territories since the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

According to the International Organization for Migration, there are 700,000 – 1 million migrants in Libya.

Al Jazeera gained access to two Eritrean men sold multiple times and still trapped in Libya.

Through conversations via a smuggled phone, we managed to communicate with the two Eritreans stuck in Libya.

Here is a first-person account of their lives, trapped in a war zone.

Sami, 18, from Mayoma in Eritrea

Sami left Eritrea when he was 15 years old. He travelled to Ethiopia and from there he made it to Sudan.

From Sudan, he was smuggled into Libya via Chad, after paying smugglers $1,500.

On the Libyan border, he was caught and told by the Libyans he had been sold by the Chadian smugglers and needed to pay more money. “They asked me to pay $6,500 more to proceed further,” he said.

“We were lied to. They beat us with sticks and a water hose. And they electrocuted us. We told them we had no money, but that did not stop them from beating us.

My mother had to sell our home in Eritrea and other assets we had and was also forced to borrow money from family and friends abroad for my trip.

Physical and mental torture
They then took us to the town of the Libyan Bani Walid, where we were held in an illegal detention centre. They gave us one piece of bread a day.

We endured physical torture but the mental torture was worse. Our captors would systematically choose people unable to pay to set an example.

They would hang them upside down and beat them. They would electrocute their nipples and waterboard them. They would pour hot oil on them and burn them. We saw people dying while being tortured.

My friend died in front of me after he was electrocuted. He came with me and we survived the journey through the desert only for him to die as a slave in captivity.

Watching others being tortured made people call anyone they could for them to send money by any means. They made us call while being tortured.

The first time they tortured me they asked me to pay. I said I don’t have the money, my father is dead and I only have my mother. They asked me if I had relatives in Europe, to which I said no.

They were not pleased, so they hanged me upside down and beat me everywhere and electrocuted me. They called my mother while I was being tortured so she could hear my screams.

The detention centre had people from Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia, as well as Nigeria and other West African countries.

At night, it used to be worse. The guards would get high on drugs and resort to beating, abuse and torture.

Schools were shut across Nigeria’s southeastern Ebonyi state on Thursday to stop the spread of Lassa fever which has killed three persons including two doctors in the past few days.

Prof. John Eke, the education commissioner in Ebonyi, told a news briefing that all schools would remain shut for the next seven days while authorities battle to prevent the spread of the communicable disease.

The decision comes a day after a woman whose children attend school tested positive for the virus, said Eke.
“We believe that one of the best ways to handle the situation is to shut down our schools until we are sure that our pupils and students are safe,” he added.

“The schools will remain shut for seven school days to enable us to monitor the situation and we appeal to parents, guardians and school authorities to comply with the directive.”

Named after a Nigerian village where the virus was first discovered in 1969, Lassa fever is a type of viral hemorrhagic fever. The source of the virus is traced to some rats. Experts say symptoms may include fever, weakness, headaches, vomiting, muscle pains and bleeding from the mouth or gastrointestinal tract.

The disease is usually spread through contact with the urine or faeces of an infected multimammate rat, or direct contact with an infected person.

The disease killed at least 101 people in Nigeria in 2016 and 80 in 2017, according to the Center for Disease Control.

The irony of the presence of Egyptian troops gathering on the Eritrean-Sudanese border over its objection to Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam is not lost on legal experts aware of Egypt’s direct responsibility in signing away Sudan’s and its own legal right to permanent access to the Nile river waters.

In recent weeks, Egypt’s displeasure has turned to desperation at being unable to secure guarantees that its 80 per cent share of water would remain intact even after the dam is set to begin operating. Together with United Arab Emirates’ assistance, Egypt has reportedly stationed troops in Eritrea’s Sawa military base in preparation to strike the Ethiopian Dam before a single megawatt of power can be produced.

Although, Eritrea has denied the build-up of Egypt’s military on its soil, recent talks between Eritrean and Egyptian presidents and separately between Eritrea and UAE have taken place. In response, Sudan, renowned for its intelligence gathering capabilities, has closed its border with Eritrea and has sealed all points of entry and exit. The events are unprecedented and show no signs of de-escalating.

Media reports of a failed Egyptian attempt to sign a unilateral agreement with Ethiopia, bypassing Sudanese involvement, was dismissed by Egyptian media as “fake news”, but has served to fuel speculation that Cairo is looking for a new deal and is prepared to seize the Sudanese share of the Nile water in the process.

However, observers have been quick to point out that a meeting held to the exclusion of Sudan between then Ethiopian President, Meles Zenawi, and Egyptian Prime Minister, Hisham El-Sherif, in May of 2011 led to the agreement to commission the Renaissance Dam in the first place.

By the time Egypt’s and Ethiopia’s Ministers of Irrigation visited Khartoum to agree on a technical committee for the dam’s construction it was clear to Sudanese legal water expert, Dr Ahmed Al-Mufti, who later resigned from the committee overseeing the project, that the agreement was irretrievably flawed. Doubts surfaced about the project’s legal veracity; most alarmingly the question of the rightful allocation and entitlement of the shares of Nile water had been completely overlooked.

“Despite the presence of agreements stemming from meetings held as far back as 1995 to 2007 between the eight members of the Nile Basin about sharing the Nile waters, the meeting held in Khartoum between Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt completely ignored legal entitlements to the water under international law and to my horror solely focused on the technical framework and specifications of the dam,” Al-Mufti told Al Jazeera news network in December 2015.

Moreover, Al-Mufti pointed out that the failure to agree a legal allocation of water before beginning the project meant that current and future generations of Egyptian and Sudanese citizens face the real possibility of being completely denied access to the use of the Nile – a move that threatened the lives of more than 135 million people. Sudan’s underground water supply may allow its population to access fresh drinking water, but Egypt’s population of 93 million could die of thirst!

However, this doomsday scenario did not seem to be at the forefront of the leaders’ minds when in March 2015 the three presidents signed a tri-partisan agreement effectively giving Ethiopia legal authority over the production of the 6,400 megawatts of electricity; sovereignty over the generation of the electricity, effectively meant sovereignty over the water that produces the power!

The signed agreement did three things that irreversibly threatens the livelihood of Sudan and Egypt: first, it effectively overrides the provisions of the 2010 Entebbe agreement, the 1959 water act and the 1947 British act, which allocated water share and protected the rights of water users; second, it made the terms of the new agreement non-binding and self-regulatory and third, it mandated that disputes between the parties could only be settled by trilateral mutual agreement.

The effect of the agreement meant that there was no binding legal treaty on water share. The non-binding, self-regulatory nature of the accord meant that any country was free to withdraw in the future from the deal at any time and there was no legal recourse given to any party to solve disputes through arbitration or mediation of a third party.

Sudan now finds itself in the invidious position of having to separate two conflicting opposing sides while trying to safeguard its own interests. Sunday’s meeting between Ethiopian and Sudanese foreign ministers confirmed the concerns about dangers looming on the Eastern border, “Sudan doesn’t talk about a specific build-up by a specific country, but we are talking about a threat to our territories from the eastern border,” Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour told a joint news conference with his Ethiopian counterpart Workneh Gebeyehu in Khartoum.

The building of the dam will produce much needed electricity for the Nile Basin region but unless the 2015 Declaration of Principles is redrafted to set a legally binding allocation of the Nile waters and prevent the monopoly of the water by one country, the prospect of the dam being destroyed and the parties concerned going to war remains a highly realistic and potentially disastrous possibility.